


Obstinato

by rukafais



Series: an endless song [6]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, brief cameos by divine and nkg, but not like enough to get their own char tags, divine actually giving good relationship advice??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 16:39:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17227598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: Meaning: obstinate, persistent.If Grimm remembers, he’s not saying anything. And it was a dream, and dreams fade so easily;he wants to askdo you remember, does it matter, did it mean anything,but having the answer might be worse. Getting the answer he doesn’t want would make that lingering memory bittersweet, at best.“You’re always so serious, my friend. Be a little more at ease. I don’t bite,” and here he smiles in a way that makes his musician flush behind his mask, “unless given permission.”He tries anyway, because if he’s learned anything from Grimm, it’s how to be bold. And isn’t that how he should be by now?





	Obstinato

He can’t even work up the nerve, at first.

He lingers by his master’s side as he always does; watches him with the same quietness he’s always had. The words stick in his throat and burn and don’t come out at all. Even if they did, he suspects they wouldn’t come out even remotely the way he wants them to.

He’s always been comfortable with silence ( _he’s never again felt the desire to use his voice in the way he once used it_ ), but now it feels like a barrier he can’t surpass, and he wonders if he was really that comfortable with it after all. It feels like a weakness, a wound that makes him helpless, that not even the heat of a living nightmare’s flame can burn away.

_Past and pain. Cannot be burned._

_The god’s voice is the crackle of flames, the breathless rush and roar of fire. His eyes burn fever-bright, with a hypnotic intensity that capture his attention and refuse to let it go. Even now, he remembers that first night, that first dream._

_To take all would be to erase you. To erase you would be forgetting. To forget would be death. I am not._

_“But what if I want you to?” It had been a child’s stubbornness, a child’s sadness. “It hurts. What if I want to forget it?”_

_It had teased a laugh out of the god, an amused exhalation that sent up sparks like stars._

_Cannot. Will not. Must bear it. That is life, reality, waking._

_He shakes his head when the child who will become the Troupe’s musician, who will take a different name upon waking, tries to argue once more._

_Someday, you will understand._

He can’t say he quite understands, not yet, even after all this time, but he knows one thing.

It’s something only he can figure out.

* * *

“Is there something wrong, my friend? Not that I would ever turn away your company, but you seem to be hovering a little.”

“Hrmm? N-no, master, it’s fine.” He clears his throat a little, pushing down his immediate urge to just stop talking altogether. It’s hard. “There’s nothing wrong. I just...wanted to be here, that’s all.”

Trying to talk, when he would rather not, is _hard_. Trying to do things the way _Grimm_ does them is so difficult.

But he feels he has to try, because...because his master deserves his best effort, because he deserves _better._ Not a musician who constantly gets nervous and hardly talks, whose only real asset is his ability to play.

He tries to talk, and still he fails, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong. He stumbles, every time.

It’s what he’s supposed to do, isn’t it? He’s supposed to try?

( _He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, any more._ )

He doesn’t even try to ask for help from other sources; he knows that would end poorly. Besides, all the Troupe visits are dying lands; they burn nightmares for fuel. There can be love there, reborn from the ashes, growing something new - but it’s not for them.

This is...something else.

* * *

He wonders if a speech would work.

Divine laughs at him, harsh but not unkindly, when he tries.

“Ahhhh, lovely, you don’t understand, do you?” She’s always smiling, but this is different; it’s fond in its own way, and he doesn’t know how to feel about that at all. “Words like that won’t do at all. No, none of that.”

“Mrmm...music, then?”

She shrugs, infuriatingly cryptic as usual. “Whatever you like, lovely. _I_ can’t tell you. Otherwise, there’s no point!”

He takes the hint, at least, and doesn’t try to think of any more speeches.

It’s a relief, in truth, even if it feels like more cowardice. He can’t even get his voice to work the way he wants in normal conversation; he doubts practice would make it less embarrassing or stressful.

He’s starting to know what feels wrong, but he still doesn’t know what feels _right._

He doesn’t know if he’ll ever find something that feels right.

* * *

When it _does_ happen, it’s something entirely unexpected.

Grimm is singing again; he does it more often now, and Brumm can’t figure out exactly why.

It’s a safe question. Easy to answer. He thinks he can manage it, speechless though he is around his master much of the time (more and more these days), so he asks why.

“Because you enjoy it, my dear musician. Is there any better reason?”

There’s a hint of surprise in his tone, like it’s something he never expected to be asked. A moment of being caught off-balance, and so Brumm’s reply is off-balance in turn. A moment of uncontrolled honesty.

“Mrmm. I would have thought there would be.”

There’s better things than his enjoyment, after all. Grimm’s voice, like all else he does, could captivate an audience easily; he could be practicing for that. Or Grimm could simply be doing it because he wants to, for his own interest.

He doesn’t really notice his master move until he’s right there beside him, half-hunched and not entirely comfortable. It’s so jarringly at odds with how he usually sits that he can’t help but turn his head to look.

The expression on Grimm’s face is something almost sad, something unbearably vulnerable, and he - he doesn’t know what to think.

“Do you really think of yourself that poorly?”

“Mrmm, a little...it’s nothing, master.”

_Don’t trouble yourself with it,_ he wants to say, but his master’s hand lifts his chin with a light touch and he’s stricken into silence once again. (Around Grimm, he’s always left speechless.)

“My dear musician. Am I making you unhappy? If you want to leave, you need only ask. The choice is yours, as ever--”

Brumm simply sets his mask aside and leans forward to close the gap between them, and for once, in all these years of conversation, it’s the Troupe Master who is interrupted mid-sentence.

The kiss is gentler than it was the first time, less impulsive, less harsh and frustrated. It’s no less startling in its softness; it steals his master’s voice no less effectively.

“Well, that’s certainly an answer,” Grimm mumbles, when they finally break apart, and Brumm is pleased to note that he sounds a little out of breath, a little scattered.

He enjoys that, he thinks, _very_ much.

He leans in to kiss him again, and his master doesn’t object, and doesn’t ask any more questions. It’s a selfish thing to avoid using his words, but he’s always been better without them, in the end.

( _“I wanted to be better at words. For you,” the musician says, later. Grimm simply shakes his head, that melancholy softness creeping back into the twist of his mouth and the look in his eyes._  
  
“It’s not necessary,” his master says, quiet; cups his musician’s face in his hands and kisses him again like that will repair the misconception.

_It doesn’t, of course, because such things run deep and painful and can’t be healed so simply, but-- it helps to ease that insecurity, at least._

_It helps him to realise that the thought that had plagued him for so long, the thought that he wasn’t_ good enough to love him _had never crossed Grimm’s mind._ )

* * *

“ _I told you_ ,” Divine says smugly, as he passes by her tent later on. Brumm makes a grumpy noise at her words, unable to argue with her, and she just _laughs._

**Author's Note:**

> The real conflict in this is Brumm just fighting his own inadequacies and his own anxiety because he doesn't think he's good enough the way he is. He's trying really hard!!
> 
> But hey they kiss at least


End file.
